Could a corn by-product provide industry with new ‘stealth health’ ingredient?

Dried distillers grain, produced during ethanol processing has until now only found use in animal feed. But that could soon change after US researchers developed a way to turn this by-product in to a value-added food grade ingredient.

Professor Padu Krishnan, of South Dakota State University developed the process to turn this coarse golden by-product of ethanol production – also referred to as distillers' dried grain (DDG) – into a food grade ingredient using a combination of industry standard techniques.

Most DDG is currently used as animal feed, but Krishnan envisages a different use for this processing by-product.

"How many times do you walk by a pile that is 36% protein and 40% fibre?”​ he asks.

Krishnan's process purifies the DDG, changing it from hard grain into a white powder similar flour. The end result is a high protein, high fibre ingredient that could be used to substitute flour in a number of food applications, says the researcher.